September 14th, 2011

~Wednesday~ I was up at 7:00, and treated myself to another three-cheese omelet for breakfast. I went crazy wild—for the routine person that I am—and switched it up with rye toast, instead of wheat. I know you are as [click here to see what you are] as I am about that.

I had a leisurely and relaxing morning by the pool making Scrabble moves and catching up my blog. By the way, whenever I say "by the pool" or "poolside," you should always have a mental image of me under the canopy, not in the sun or on a chaise lounge.

I made another delicious sandwich from our meat and cheese stash, and enjoyed that with some Salt & Vinegar Pringles for lunch, but not enough to burn my mouth.

Later in the afternoon, I took a walk down to the Mallory Square area, where I zipped in and out of some shops, often surprised at not even getting a greeting from the shop operators. Wouldn't you think that if you were in a business that depended on tourists for your income, you'd at least act happy to see them? Maybe that's just me and my demanding customer service bitchiness. In any case, it's a win/win when they don't, as I get to hold it against them even though I would really rather just be left alone anyway.

Out by the water and pier areas, one of the many chickens, cocks, or roosters (I have no idea what the difference is between all of those, and I'm obviously not interested enough to Google it) that walk freely around Key West came so close to me that I thought it might peck at my leg.

Further along on my walk, I came across this sign at a restaurant, which tickled me, because I imagined the waitperson saying, "Would you like a side order of wi-fi with that?"

And a little further yet into my walk, I came across this sight:

which amused me for several reasons:

From a Key West marketing perspective, it's a somewhat subtle reinforcement of a theme that they really play here on the island:

It looked like a Giligan's Island-esque sign

It reminded me of a sign in a roundabout in the South of France that contributed to me totaling my rental car while there on business for IBM, back in the day.

Joe and I got to Happy Hour at about 5:45, and pretty much took it to the max today, and by that I mean we stayed pretty much until 7:00.

A little after that we walked over to a new place Joe learned about from a local, called Mattheessen's, making a quick in-and-out stop to grab a small loaf of pumpernickel bread at the other branch of that Fausto's grocery store we went to on Monday, which essentially, was across the street from Mattheessen's.

I wanted one of their Hebrew National hot dogs, which I thought I was ordering when I ordered a Grilled Cheese and Tomato sandwich. After the order was in for a bit, it occurred to me that I had only ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and I tried to get our server's attention to ask her if she would add a hot dog into that sandwich, noting I would pay for the hot dog.

She seemed a little confused about what had happened, and I told her that I thought that everything in the section of the menu where both the hot dogs and the grilled cheese sandwich were, were all variations on their hot dogs, so I thought it was a hot dog with cheese and tomato on it.

She looked at me with her head tilted a little as if to say, "And what about the 'grilled' cheese part?" but I said to her before she could ask, "Have I been drinking?" She laughed and went back to add a hot dog to my order, "You want just the hot dog, then? Not the bun?"

"Oh, no bun," I said, "I'm just going to stick the hot dog into the grilled cheese sandwich, which is exactly what I did:

When the dog first arrived, I wanted to cut it for two reasons: 1) to put half of it on each half of the grilled cheese sandwich, which was cut in half, and 2) to give Joe a part of it to taste.

I went up to the counter, which our server was behind, along with the other gal working behind the counter, and I said, "It's me. Mr. High Maintenance. May I have a knife now, please?" (When my sandwhich had first arrived, while waiting for the hot dog, I had also gone up to get a fork, since there was a little side of slaw with the sandwich, and I really didn't want to root into it with my tongue.)

When it was all said and done, my meal was absolutely delicious. And when the bill came, they hadn't even charged me for the hot dog, so I left a 60% tip.

Joe bought two of their large—as big around as the head on your shoulders—cookies, one chocolate chip and one oatmeal and raisin, which we took to go to eat either later in the evening, or tomorrow morning with coffee for breakfast.

Johnny was a dull, dull boy, and lay down in his bed at about 10:30, and shortly after that was out for the night. Bless my chillaxing mess.